Today’s recovery was for a lady who lost her impressive diamond stud earring while staining her deck a few days ago. She at some point took off her dust mask which probably caught her earring and flung it off into the unknown! She noticed the back landed in between the boards, and then realized her loss.

After her and her husband scoured the yard, and squeezed under the deck to look for it, they tried renting a metal detector. They found out quickly, though, stud earrings are very hard to detect because they contain so little actual metal. In fact, their rental unit could not even detect it when they passed it over the 2nd earring.

I had confidence that at least one of my machines should be able to outperform this rental unit and headed out with all 3. After testing on the other earring, I was pretty surprised to find my 2 most expensive detectors would not detect this target!

My least expensive unit did, but just a barely audible sound would come through, and only occasionally. I started getting pretty nervous that this hunt would be unsuccessful.

To make matters worse, the lawn area around the deck was littered with nails from the sloppy contractor who built it. I was getting a pretty sinking feeling, but I was determined to at least try. Many nails were pulled out of the ground, so I could concentrate on the whisper that the earring MIGHT give me.

Somehow, someway, I managed to pass over a quiet target and it was the earring! We were both so amazed and relieved, and glad that I have a few types of machines in my arsenal!

Brenda Speedy had loaned her platinum stud and diamond earrings to a friend’s daughter. While preparing to go into a soccer match one of the earrings went missing. The two adults searched on their hands and knees without success. They later rented a metal detector at a local store and searched the area. Finding a stud earring is no easy task as there is not a lot of metal to make a metal detector react. Once again their search did not give their desired results. Later that night the two searched the area for another two hours using headlamps hoping the diamond would reflect the light, still no luck. They even went as far as using a shop vacuum the following day in hopes that it would suck up the lost jewel.

Brenda contacted me Monday night telling me of her predicament and her efforts to find the earring. We set a plan to meet at the park the next morning to search for the earring. I arrived at the assigned meeting time and location and we walked the area where the earring was supposed to be while Brenda once again explained the events that led to the earrings loss and her efforts to find it.

I set up my machines and tested them both on the match to the lost ear ring to make sure they were picking up the signal. I selected one of my machines and started my grid search. After an hour and a half I had found the earring within a few feet of where they had used the shop vacuum and within the area that they had searched using the rental metal detector.

The pair of platinum and diamond earrings had been given to Brenda by her father and they held a sentimental value that far exceeded the monetary value of the pair.